The Attentional Bias On Aggressive Information In Individuals With Different Level Of Violent Games Experience

With the arrival of information age, network has been throughout all aspects of our life, and electronic games also have been sought after by more and more players. With the continuous development of the electronic games, the double-edged sword effect of which has become more prominent, not only bringing the relaxing entertainment to players, but also appearing violent content and pictures in the games. However, lots of adolescents indulge in these violent games.Many studies which studied the relationship between violent video games and adolescents’ social behavior have shown that long-term playing violent video games affected the player’s aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive emotion, physiological arousal, and reduced the pro-social behavior. Cognitive theory and the GAM model together show that playing violent video games will format aggressive schema and offensive thinking, and long-term playing violent video games will strengthen the offensive schema and aggressive thinking.Many studies have verified mood disorders show attentional bias to negative information (including threatening) and offender show attentional bias to aggressive information. But there are very few about the influence of violent video game experience on attentional bias. Therefor, this study will put the emphasis on the influence of violent video game experience on attentional bias. Emotional stroop task will be used in this study to verify the level of experience of the violent games on attentional bias, and the spatial cues task (clues target paradigm) will be used to determine attentional bias is which kind of component.This study is divided into two parts, containing three experimental game. Habits questionnaire of video games is used to examine the experience level of violent games, and according to both ends of the score selected a high violent games experience group and a low violent games experience group. Firstly, the study one will verify the attentional bias of different level groups. Then the spatial cues task will distinguish this attentional bias is vigilance or disengagement. The early studies din’t distinguish the component of attentional bias in different level of violent video game experience.Study one by2(the level of violence:high group, low group) x2(word types: offensive words, neutral words) two-factor mixed design, using of offensive words and neutral words as experimental material, emotional stroop paradigm investigated attentional bias in the high and low level group.The results show that the offensive words easy to be disturbed, and high violence gaming group could not resist the interference of the offensive words, showing attentional bias for offensive words.Experiment a in study two use2(violent games experience level:high group low group) x2(word types:aggressive, neutral) x2(clue types:valid, invalid) a three-factor mixed design, using of the words in study one as experimental material and spatial cues task investigated different the violent game experience group attentional bias inherent mechanism. The experimental data showed the response was faster in the valid condition than invalid. In the invalid conditions, high violent games experience group showed attentional bias for offensive words, expressed as the reaction of offensive words significantly slower than the reaction of neutral words, which was disengagement.Experiment b in study two use2(violent games experience level:high group low group) x2(picture types:aggressive, non-aggressive) x2(clue types:valid, invalid) a three-factor mixed design, using pictures as experimental material and spatial cues task investigated different the violent game experience group attentional bias inherent mechanism. It was found that in addition to the the significant clues effects, the offensive picture were more attractive than non-offensive picture. The analysis also found that invalid cues prompt the high violent games group show an attention residence on the offensive pictures.Comprehensive results showing:(1) The experience of violent video games does affect youth attentional bias, so they tend to focus on the offensive informations;(2) the high violent video game experience group may appear a difficulty in disengaging from aggressive stimuli;(3) aggressive pictures attract more attention than non-aggressive pictures. These results meet cognitive theory and long-term&short-term effects of playing violent video in the GAM model. Long-term exposure to violent video games will forme and solidify the offensive schema, and ultimately form the attack cognitive.There are some place in this study need to be further strengthened and examined in detail, such as the increase of the control group of non-violent games and increase positive material (positive words and positive image). ERP or fMRI experimental techniques can also be used to examine the effect of the level of violent games experience on the offensive attention bias.